When I met with Acer reps back in September to get a look at the company's forthcoming Windows 8 hardware, they mentioned a few times that the company was really looking to shed its image as a purveyor of inexpensive but mediocre laptops. Acer still continues to sell low-end models that fit this description—look at the C7 Chromebook—but it would also like to claim a slice of the high-end market that Lenovo, Apple, Asus, and others have so effectively staked out with their best laptops and Ultrabooks.

If Acer's touchscreen-equipped S7 Ultrabook (which we first previewed back in October, is an example of what we can expect from the company going forward, it might just be able to pull off this image rehabilitation. We've spent a few days with the 13-inch model, and there are quite a few things to like about it. It still has a few notable flaws, though, and they stick out all the more because of the laptop's good qualities. Let's explore.

When one thinks of Acer, good build quality isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. The S7 goes a long way toward changing this perception. The laptop is very thin and light—it’s half an inch thick when closed and weighs less than three pounds, features which are both generally excellent for this product segment. The laptop is also uniform in thickness throughout, rather than tapered as some other Ultrabooks are.

The 13-inch model uses an attractive white-and-silver color scheme that offers a nice contrast to the aluminum-with-black-trim aesthetic of many Ultrabooks. The lid, which has an illuminated Acer logo inset, is white, coated entirely in Gorilla Glass, and rimmed with aluminum trim. We worry just a little bit about the glass shattering if, for example, it’s in a bag that has something heavy set on top of it in an airplane, but it seems fairly sturdy and it’s quite striking. The 11-inch model, which we aren’t looking at in-depth today, uses a still-nice but more conventional aluminum lid.

The display bezel is also white and glass-covered, while the hinge and wrist rest are both aluminum. The bottom of the laptop is made of sturdy white plastic. Apple’s unibody aluminum designs still set the standard for solid construction in this price class, but the general fit and finish of Acer’s S7 is excellent, and it’s a huge step forward for the company.

Enlarge/ The aluminum wrist rest tells us that Acer's Ultrabooks are still "Professionally Tuned."

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The bottom of the S7 is a matte white plastic that matches the lid.

Andrew Cunningham

My first gripe with the general design of the laptop is the location of the power button, which is on the left edge of the laptop next to some of the ports. While picking up and moving the laptop, I’ve accidentally pressed that button four times, so I feel pretty confident in saying that it isn’t optimally placed. We’ll talk a bit more about this when we discuss the keyboard, but it’s details like these that really detract from the attractiveness of the total package.

Ports

Enlarge/ On the left, we've got a power jack, micro HDMI port, headphone jack, and power button.

The S7’s selection of ports is a bit on the light side, but it includes what it needs to: a headphone jack and micro HDMI port on the left edge, and two USB 3.0 ports and an SD card reader on the right. Included micro HDMI-to-VGA and USB-to-Ethernet dongles help to supplement what’s built into the laptop. Two Dolby Digital speakers on the bottom of the laptop lack bass, but they do get nice and loud and don’t distort much at higher volumes.

Enlarge/ In addition to its micro HDMI-to-VGA and USB-to-Ethernet dongles, the S7 also comes with a case and Bluetooth mouse.

Andrew Cunningham

Screen

One of the best things about most of the PC laptops that we’ve been reviewing lately is that there has been no need to go on any tirades about awful, washed out 1366×768 panels, at least not in the high-end. We really liked the 1600×900 IPS display in the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga and the 1920×1080 display in the Asus Zenbook Prime, and the Acer S7 is another good one. It uses a 1920×1080 IPS touchscreen with the aforementioned Gorilla glass coating, resulting in a display that is fairly reflective but also has great color, brightness, and viewing angles.

I personally like 1080p in a 13-inch laptop, but others may find it a bit small, especially on the Windows desktop—Windows 8’s Start screen and Metro apps scale better than the desktop does and shouldn’t cause problems for even visually impaired users. The system uses 125 percent scaling on the desktop out of the box, which is a reasonably comfortable default setting that doesn’t look too bad.

Enlarge/ The glass-coated IPS display is reflective, but it holds its color well even from extreme angles.

Andrew Cunningham

As for its touch capabilities, they’re really just an extra feature. The laptop’s hinge bends a full 180 degrees making it possible to lay the screen flat on a table, but unlike so many other Windows 8 Ultrabooks, it’s not trying to be a convertible tablet. Our general opinion of touchscreens in Ultrabooks applies to the S7: since the natural resting position of your hands on the keyboard is already pretty close to the screen, it’s trivial to reach out and interact with the touchscreen briefly to perform any tasks that are awkward or difficult on the keyboard and trackpad. You won’t be using touch as a primary input method, but it’s definitely a worthwhile accessory.

I had to put a game on to really get the fans to speed up, but once they did they were quite loud, and the area above the keyboard got pretty warm to the touch. This isn’t atypical for Ultrabooks (and the S7 didn’t feel quite as hot as my 13-inch MacBook Air does during a long Minecraft session), but it’s worth mentioning. However, during lighter use (writing, browsing the Web, playing music, and other normal activities) the fans were quiet and the laptop was merely warm.

50 Reader Comments

Why can't PC makers get their shit together and put something out there that is decent? Nice IPS panel? Then poor battery life. Good battery life? Then poor screen. Have both? Shitty design/looks.Of course, if they do get something mostly right (HP Envy 15 & 17) then they are considered Mac clones. Argh, it's tough finding a PC with everything I need. Or, like Jerry Seinfeld, I'm just too picky.

I think one nice thing is that it seems quite easy to clean the heatsink/fan when you remove the bottom.

While it's not necessarily a major concern to all users in all situations, I had an old cheap HP laptop which basically died because I couldn't clean the fan effectively (I used compressed air many times).

The only way to access the CPU HS/F was take apart the ENTIRE laptop because it was sandwiched between the motherboard and the top of the bottom of the chassis (if you can understand).

Nice to see that while there may not be that many user serviceable parts, at least cleaning/etc is easy enough, as it looks like so would battery replacement (if it starts losing charge).

Do you know if the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, or is it regular SODIMM type RAM but on the other side of the board?

That keyboard just looks practically... empty. Having no function keys would be the deal breaker far before the battery life would be (though that's still pretty bad, and I lived with sub-2 hr battery life for a while).

The page up/page down placement, though, isn't so much of a problem, in my opinion. My Thinkpad did the same thing, and while it was strange to me, initially, it became pretty convenient having them right there when scrolling through web pages or browsing documents. Just my 2¢.

I think the only unexpected thing that could have happened would have been Acer delivering a quality laptop. I've bought their stuff before, but only because it was odd (Iconia W500) or cheap (Aspire One 8.9") and effectively disposable.

Makes me enjoy my UX32VD even more, even if the track pad is still surprisingly inconsistent at times.

I liked the Ideapad Yoga 13 a lot, as long as you don't want to use it as a tablet. I also have high hopes for the Dell XPS 12 (which I just got in the mail yesterday). I've got a few others in my office that I'm slowly working my way through, though. :-)

Edit: Oh! And I believe I heard that Asus would be releasing a touchscreen version of the Zenbook Prime, another PC Ultrabook I liked quite a bit, though I'm not sure what the status of that one is. That's probably my favorite keyboard in a PC laptop at the moment.

We also have some concerns about the SSD's long-term reliability. It's theoretically possible that one of the two "drives" on the single mSATA card could fail, and since RAID 0 has no redundancy, the failure of one "drive" would end up destroying all data on both of them, doubling the likelihood of failure and data loss compared to a more conventional SSD.

I have a tough time thinking that way.

The thought that the dual-drive is theoretically possible to fail before the single-drive - just because there are more components to fail, and not the quality of components and their manufacture - is difficult for me to get worked-up about.

I'll lose all the data on a 'more conventional' drive, if it fails, so I find it hard to worry that a dual-drive 'might' fail earlier -just- because it has more components.

If we were discussing the -quality- of the components - and their assembly - then I would be concerned the lower-quality parts would have a noticeablely worse failure rate.

Though this is to be expected. I wonder, since Acer is a non-US-based company, I wonder if the UX R&D (if they have such things) is more geared toward their 'hometown' demographics, and they just sell the same things to the rest of the world? Maybe we're griping about them, but in Taiwan, for example, they might be raving about the keyboard, or something?

Maybe Acer needs a US office/subsidiary/focus group or 5....They seem to be going after some of the wrong things to get rid of their image.

1. The delete key is big. The return key is big. Yay.2. The esc key is still upper left where I can blindly smash it3. I barely use function keys, except F5. I'm sure I can find an alternate key sequence.4. I barely use the tilde key, except for codeblocking on SO and bringing down a game console5. I never use the caps lock key. Why does it get so much real estate on all other keyboards?6. I use the page down/up and arrow keys for website nav all the time - having them next to each other is great. I hate the half-height though.

For me the killer on this laptop is certainly the price and battery life. $1k and 6 hours please.

Though this is to be expected. I wonder, since Acer is a non-US-based company, I wonder if the UX R&D (if they have such things) is more geared toward their 'hometown' demographics, and they just sell the same things to the rest of the world? Maybe we're griping about them, but in Taiwan, for example, they might be raving about the keyboard, or something?

Maybe Acer needs a US office/subsidiary/focus group or 5....They seem to be going after some of the wrong things to get rid of their image.

Asian languages don't have less characters, they have more. So even if you're a touch typist in another character set your fingers are going to expect buttons in certain places, which aren't in those places with this keyboard. The layout is just a bizarre design decision for a premium laptop.

Perhaps it was influenced by all the non-standard touch keyboards on mobile devices? No function keys there, at least.

Did you do any tests under normal brightness settings (manually set to comfortable indoor brighteness, or with auto-brightness)? I'm skeptical about any test at 100%, since I almost never set brightness to that level on laptops or tablets (unless I'm reading outside, in the summer), and that test could penalize any manufacturers that include higher-than-normal brightness settings, even if their battery life is good at normal settings.

Does Windows 8 scale the UI? I would imagine running on 13" 1920x1080 screen that UI elements are tiny.

I am all for better resolutions, but not at the price of tiny UI elements.

Yes, the start screen automatically scales, and the desktop can be manually scaled to 100%, 125%, or 150% in the preferences. I use 150% for my Vaio Duo 11 (11.6" 1080p) and it works well. Sharp text but decent-sized menus and buttons.

Hold up - why was the battery test done with the screen at full brightness? Firstly, don't manufacturers' battery life guidelines usually assume a screen set to about medium brightness? And secondly, this is inconsistent with battery life tests performed on other laptops in the past. In the 2012 MacBook Air review the battery life test is performed with the screen brightness set to "the third dot from the bottom". (http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/06/re ... -bridge/2/)

The article doesn't state that a medium screen brightness is too low to use, so why set it to maximum? The battery life may well be rubbish but you don't need to be unfair about it.

We also have some concerns about the SSD's long-term reliability. It's theoretically possible that one of the two "drives" on the single mSATA card could fail, and since RAID 0 has no redundancy, the failure of one "drive" would end up destroying all data on both of them, doubling the likelihood of failure and data loss compared to a more conventional SSD.

I have a tough time thinking that way.

The thought that the dual-drive is theoretically possible to fail before the single-drive - just because there are more components to fail, and not the quality of components and their manufacture - is difficult for me to get worked-up about.

I'll lose all the data on a 'more conventional' drive, if it fails, so I find it hard to worry that a dual-drive 'might' fail earlier -just- because it has more components.

If we were discussing the -quality- of the components - and their assembly - then I would be concerned the lower-quality parts would have a noticeablely worse failure rate.

Statistically, it's not that it might fail earlier, it's that it will fail at half the expected lifetime since there are twice as many components to fail.

Put another way, if you expect your drive to last 6 years, normally, this drive should only last 3 years.

Because of 8b/10b encoding the actual theoretical data transfer speed would be 600 MB/s.

I believe it is almost exclusively Microsoft (and some older GNU/Unix utilities) that still make a mess of the prefixes, while the proper binary prefixes (Ki, Mi; Gi for 1024^1, 1024^2, 1024^3) and SI prefixes (k, M, G for 10^3, 10^6, 10^9) are catching on fairly well in most other places.

Don't worry, me neither. Though I still like the feel of a larger, heavier laptop when doing sustained work for hours if it's sitting on my lap while I lay on the couch or my bed. I find devices this light tend to just move around too much as I type on an uneven surface. On a table or desk though, no problems whatsoever.

For the price I have to wonder who would pay it? Acer has always been a PC maker that screams out discount, cheap, and basic. It does not say inovative, quality, or staus symbol. But I don't blame Acer alone for making this expensive and poorly done tablet. I also blame Microsoft for not making a tablet OS that does as well with handling battery consumption as Apple does. No company today should have a problem building a low power device. We have seen Chromebooks get good battery life and Mac's and iPads. The hardware is not that different, the problem is Microsoft should have made a stand alone OS for tablets and it simply did not. Yes, Acer still should take the blame for even approving such a lame expensive tablet. But considering some Netbooks got better battery life with Windows 7. Something is wrong with Windows 8 if it cannot help battery life more then this.

Don't worry, me neither. Though I still like the feel of a larger, heavier laptop when doing sustained work for hours if it's sitting on my lap while I lay on the couch or my bed. I find devices this light tend to just move around too much as I type on an uneven surface. On a table or desk though, no problems whatsoever.

I would spend money on a Surface before this. Heck I could just about buy two Surface's for just one of these.

Don't worry, me neither. Though I still like the feel of a larger, heavier laptop when doing sustained work for hours if it's sitting on my lap while I lay on the couch or my bed. I find devices this light tend to just move around too much as I type on an uneven surface. On a table or desk though, no problems whatsoever.

I would spend money on a Surface before this. Heck I could just about buy two Surface's for just one of these.

For the price I have to wonder who would pay it? Acer has always been a PC maker that screams out discount, cheap, and basic. It does not say inovative, quality, or staus symbol. But I don't blame Acer alone for making this expensive and poorly done tablet. I also blame Microsoft for not making a tablet OS that does as well with handling battery consumption as Apple does. No company today should have a problem building a low power device. We have seen Chromebooks get good battery life and Mac's and iPads. The hardware is not that different, the problem is Microsoft should have made a stand alone OS for tablets and it simply did not. Yes, Acer still should take the blame for even approving such a lame expensive tablet. But considering some Netbooks got better battery life with Windows 7. Something is wrong with Windows 8 if it cannot help battery life more then this.

Oh, and the fact that they stuff in a battery almost 40% larger. The 4860 mAh battery they use on the Acer? That's the battery Apple uses in the 11.6" 1366x768 1.4GHz MacBook Air, which also happens to have about 27% less backlit surface area and significantly higher transmission due to lower pixel density than the Acer. It also probably helps that Apple's similar 13" MBA only has a 1.8GHz CPU, 10MHz lower than the S7, while also having a lower resolution 1440x900 screen.

Don't worry, me neither. Though I still like the feel of a larger, heavier laptop when doing sustained work for hours if it's sitting on my lap while I lay on the couch or my bed. I find devices this light tend to just move around too much as I type on an uneven surface. On a table or desk though, no problems whatsoever.

I would spend money on a Surface before this. Heck I could just about buy two Surface's for just one of these.

And you can buy two iPads for the price of a MacBook Air...what's your point? ARM devices are cheaper than Ivy Bridge devices. Shocking. The Vaio Duo 11 has an Ivy Bridge CPU, a 1080p IPS display, 4-8 gb of ram, a 128 gb or 256 gb SSD, dual USB 3.0, HDMI, SD card, VGA, ethernet, and a backlit hardware keyboard. There's a reason it's twice the price of a Surface RT.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.